Current environments, such as homes, contain many appliances ranging from illumination sources (i.e., lamps) and climate control systems (i.e., air conditioners and heating systems) to entertainment devices (i.e., stereo, television) and message delivery systems (i.e., voicemail, fax, email). When an individual enters an environment, they must affirmatively perform an action to initiate each appliance and adjust each appliance to suit their tastes or deliver their personalized information. For example, to check one's voicemail, a user must dial up their voicemail carrier, enter their mailbox and pin number (for location and identification purposes) and perform a series of keystrokes to finally obtain their messages. Additionally, a user must sort through various messages that may be directed to other individuals before finding and receiving their own, such as with a telephone answering machine.
Face recognition identification technology, as described in U.S. Pat. Nos. 6,111,517 and 6,108,437, herein incorporated by reference, has been employed to identify individuals and restrict access to controlled environments. Present face recognition methods used in person identification systems, typically employ a face recognizer which determines the identity of a human face image. In order to identify the image, the system compares the face to other faces, or performs a feature extraction and compares features to those recorded in a database.